Penguin Swims 5,000 Miles Each Year To Visit Man Who Saved His Life

Every year a penguin swims 5,000 miles to be reunited with his dear friend, the man who saved his life five years ago.

The South American Magellanic penguin swims the journey annually to meet with a retired bricklayer and part-time fisherman, Joao Pereira de Souza, who lives on an island outside Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Back in 2011 Joao found the penguin covered in oil and near death on his local beach.

He cleaned the oil off the penguin’s feathers and fed him a daily diet of fish and called his new friend Dindim

After a week, he tried to release the penguin back into the sea. But, the bird wouldn’t leave. ‘He stayed with me for 11 months and then, just after he changed his coat with new feathers, he disappeared,’ Joao recalls.

And, just a few months later, Dindim was back. He spotted the fisherman on the beach one day and followed him home.

For the past five years, Dindim has spent eight months of the year with Joao and is believed to spend the rest of the time breeding off the coast of Argentina and Chile.

It’s thought he swims up to 5,000 miles each year to be reunited with the man who saved his life.

‘I love the penguin like it’s my own child and I believe the penguin loves me,’ Joao told Globo TV. ‘No one else is allowed to touch him. He pecks them if they do. He lays on my lap, lets me give him showers, allows me to feed him sardines and to pick him up.

‘Everyone said he wouldn’t return but he has been coming back to visit me for the past four years. He arrives in June and leaves to go home in February and every year he becomes more affectionate as he appears even happier to see me.’

Biologist Professor Krajewski, who interviewed the fisherman for Globo TV, told The Independent: ‘I have never seen anything like this before. I think the penguin believes Joao is part of his family and probably a penguin as well.

‘When he sees him he wags his tail like a dog and honks with delight.

And, just like that, the world seems a kinder place again.

Brazilian man and his penguin credit Rio de Janeiro Federal University